New money for regional Australians in wind

Charlie Prell is a farmer near Goulburn, SE NSW, who hopes to host some wind towers on his property soon.

He's part of the Crookwell Wind Farm project, and has been receiving rental payments for the project for nearly four years.

But he'd like to see the wind farm completed, and told GetUp his community's story in a video last November.

Charlie has already spent a lot of this new income on projects he wouldn't have done otherwise.

He tallied up his first two years of spending in 2013 and realised $155,000 had already been churned through the local economy:

$16,900 in wages to local employees

$4,600 on repairs to cottages on my farm (permanently rented to locals)

$8,100 rebuilding the foundations to the shearing shed on my farm

$49,300 replacing and upgrading fences on my farm

$17,500 repairing the roads on my farm

$9,200 in weed control

$31,400 on repairs to my house

$17,100 on repairs to my father’s house

$4,600 in donations to charitable causes (both within and outside this area)

Charlie is so impressed by the benefits wind farms can bring to local communities that he told his story to the Goulburn Chamber of Commerce in 2013.

"I am only one farmer of three in this windfarm project. If the Crookwell 3 windfarm is approved and constructed then there will be three more farmers (a total of six) with the spending capabilities that I now have."

"The question I ask this forum is this: how much more income would we have generated in this economy if we had been actively campaigning for well-designed windfarms in this area, instead of fighting the emergence of this new technology?"

Charlie is now employed part-time by the Australian Wind Alliance to encourage the growth of wind energy in Australia.